Heritage declaration sought for Chinese museum

CEBU, Philippines - The Sugbu Chinese Heritage Museum Foundation Inc. wants the Gotiaoco Building to be declared a heritage site.

The building used to be the office of the Cebu City Market Operations Division and is almost a century old as it was built in 1914 by Pedro Gotiaoco, a Chinese trader from the Fukien Province in China.

John Vincent T. Castro, Curator of the Sugbu Chinese Heritage Museum that will soon be established in the Gotiaoco Building, said that the building is one of Cebu’s earliest commercial building and the first to install its own elevator and air conditioning system back then.

For some time, it has also housed the H.E. Heacock Department Store and KzRC, now known dyRC, the first radio station in Cebu.

The National Cultural Heritage Act of 2009 allows a structure over 50 years old to be declared a heritage site.

Further, Section 22 of the same act said that “properties that bear strong foreign architectural influences such as American, Spanish or Japanese and those with strong evidence of an active, political, social, economic and cultural relations with neighboring countries” can be declared a heritage site.

The Cultural and Historical Affairs Commission (CHAC) recommended to the Council to recognize the Gotiaoco Building as a heritage structure. It shall serve as a recommendation to the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP).

Archt. Melva R. Java, CHAC commissioner, said that the Gotiaoco building “has a touch of neo-classic in American period architecture evidenced by its arcaded facades, window proportions that partake of the golden mean and a heavily-set reinforced concrete outer shell.”

CHAC also recognizes the economic significance of the place since 1914 up to the present.

The Chinese Heritage Museum will tell the history of the Chinese influence in Cebu.

It will be a museum and sort of a library or Chinese Center for ongoing and future researches about the Chinese here. There will be a repository of Chinese artifacts and documents. —/JPM (FREEMAN)